


You Cannot Have Both

by asthmaticbee



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But also a pain in the ass, Gen, Nea is being a good uncle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26329330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asthmaticbee/pseuds/asthmaticbee
Summary: “Name’s Nea, the Fourteenth, the Traitor, the Earl’s Bane, whatever you prefer.” Standing straight once more, his cheeky grin was wide as he saluted at Allen from the mirror.“And I’m your Noah, pleased to make your acquaintance.”Or, how Nea gives Allen a hard time while around him the Noah's Arc crumbles to the ground.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 83





	You Cannot Have Both

**Author's Note:**

> This was mostly a drabble borne from work and bachelor's thesis stress while I suffered a migraine, so have fun with that. I kinda liked the idea of Nea being a cheeky uncle giving Allen a hard time, but being a good guy deep down.

When Allen opened his eyes he was met with a blinding white, contrasting starkly with the pitch black of the Akuma factory he had just left behind. Disoriented he sat up from the plushy couch he was lying on, staring around the small room warily.

The room glowed with an eery light that should have blinded and unsettled him, but instead seemed to fill him with a sense of comfort he couldn’t quite place. In the back of his mind, Allen could remember that he had come here with a purpose, the remnants of desperation and loss steadily fading from his mind as if the light was bleaching them from his memory.

Slowly getting up he faced the wall of mirrors next to the couch, and stopped dead in his tracks.

On the piano seat sat a Noah, at first reminding him of Tyki Mikk, but he realized the mistake almost as quickly as the thought had crossed his mind. The Noah was smirking lazily at him, one foot on the seat, arms crossed on the knee and head resting atop them. The other leg was swinging idly beside him, and the black hair that was held back in a ponytail curled down his back.

“Yo.”

Quickly whirling around to the piano in the room, Allen’s gaze landed on empty space where the Noah should have been, and his heart beat fast in his chest. Slowly turning back around the Noah now stood opposite Allen, facing him, but still within the mirrors instead of in the room. Gulping heavily, the white-haired teen stepped towards the wall, unnerved by the Noah mimicking his every move, the lazy smile still on his face.

“Who are you?”

It felt foolish to ask, somehow, but the Noah’s grin widened, and he shrugged, averting his gaze.

“What is it to you, nephew?”

That startled Allen more, and he gulped. “Nephew?”

The Noah, his _uncle_ , faced him again, and something like mirth was dancing in his golden eyes. “Well, you _are_ Allen Walker, adoptive son of Mana Walker, or am I wrong?”

He felt his temper getting the better of him at the Noah’s nonchalance, and frowned. “What’s my father got to do with this?” He hadn’t even noticed his speech slipping into a more informal pattern, reminiscent of a childhood he’d long left behind.

The man in the mirror tilted his head back slightly, hands buried in the pockets of his pants. “Well, Mana was my brother.” Shrugging once more, he gave him a mock bow, the Noah’s attitude grating on Allen’s nerve more than unnerving him. “Name’s Nea, the Fourteenth, the Traitor, the Earl’s Bane, whatever you prefer.” Standing straight once more, his cheeky grin was wide as he saluted at Allen from the mirror.

“And I’m your Noah, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Allen blinked, slowly, and a shiver finally ran down his spine as the words sank in. Shaking his head to clear the panic slowly rising within him he focused back on Nea, who was still smirking infuriatingly at him. “I’m not a Noah, I’m an Exorcist.” Stepping closer to the mirror, he jabbed his finger at the man, feeling slightly foolish as he did so. “I don’t care who you are or what your angle is, I’m never going to be one of you murderers.”

Nea’s face stayed smug, but Allen could swear there was something like pity in the golden eyes of his supposed uncle. “Well, if you want to save your friends, I’m afraid you don’t exactly have a choice in the matter, Allen.”

It was the first time he had addressed him with his name, and it was like a bucket of ice water had been dropped on Allen as the reason he was in the strange room to begin with flooded back into his mind. Slamming his hands against the mirrors his silver eyes bored into Nea’s golden ones. “How?”

The Noah did not respond, and instead turned away back towards the piano, hands back in his pockets. The Exorcist followed his gaze to the real-world equivalent, although he wondered idly if this room was real at all or he was just having a fever dream.

“This is real.”

He whipped his head back around, and Nea’s face met him, no longer grinning but solemn. “Whether you like it or not, you are the next Fourteenth, the next host of my memories.” Nea was now facing him fully again, serious in a way that unnerved Allen for the first time since he had awoken in this strange room that seemed to be in a world of its own.

“I, you, _we_ are the Noah of Music, the true owner of this Arc.”

Allen swallowed thickly, his mouth suddenly dry. When he didn’t respond Nea took a few steps towards the mirror piano, once more facing away from him. “Before the Earl killed me, I reprogrammed this Arc. I stranded it in Edo, and made sure only I would be able to ever move it again. This room is only accessible to you, my host.” The Noah looked at him again. “The Earl doesn’t know of it, and as long as this room and my memories remain in this world, the Arc cannot be destroyed.”

“So what?” Allen was surprised when he spoke, his voice teetering on a breakdown. “What does it matter? My friends are dead, the Arc swallowed into nothingness. You cannot bring back what’s gone.”

Nea waved his hand nonchalantly, but his face remained serious. “That’s where you are wrong, nephew.” He pointed at the piano. “Everything in this Arc is connected to your Noah, Allen. As long as you remain, nothing in this Arc ever really disappears.”

Allen felt something like hope swell in his chest, before his uncle spoke once more. “There is a catch.”

Silver eyes glared at him, and he chuckled as the teen growled lowly under his breath. The humor fled him completely, however, as he spoke again. “An Exorcist cannot control the Arc, Allen.”

Allen stared warily at the piano keys, acutely aware of Nea’s presence, not in the mirror, but in him, a cold shadow looming over him and suffocating him.

_An Exorcist cannot control the Arc, Allen._

His fingers trembled as he laid them atop the keys, his heartbeat the only sound in his ears.

_Your friends or your humanity, you cannot have both._

He took a shuddering breath and closed his eyes, symbols, _notes_ he invented with his adoptive father years ago glowing in his mind’s eye, and he realized they had not invented them at all.

_The Arc is part of you, of your Noah, and only you know the song to make it yield._

A lone tear slipped from his right eye, and he felt his fingers move on their own accord, and almost instantly he felt blinding pain shoot across his forehead and blood, thick and black, ran down his face from the fresh stigmata. Nea’s hands were over his own, the coolness soothing the searing fire coursing through him and steading him as dizziness engulfed him.

The melody was haunting, and unwittingly he began to sing, unable to stop himself.

Falling fast asleep  
May this little boy find blissful dreams  
Among the ash and the flames that light up the night sky  
One by one, falling softly  
With your silhouette casting shadows of your lovely face I watch the sky

Allen was panting as he struck the last note, sweat dripping from his skin. He could hear Nea’s voice echo within the room, though he now knew it was really inside his head.

_Sleep, my nephew._

And he fell asleep.

Cross Marian clicked his tongue, annoyed at the way his idiot pupil had unceremoniously dropped not only him and the young Lee girl in the Arc’s plaza, but also a bunch of his friends, all pestering him with incessant questions. Pointedly ignoring them he lit a cigarette and took a long drag, wishing not for the first time that day for a bottle or ten of good red wine.

The redhead moved his hand to the communicator on his ear, ire at his useless apprentice growing with every question he ignored. “Oi, you dumbass, what were you thinking just dropping us here?” When no answer came, he growled, and he was glad the questions had ceased. “Don’t just fucking ignore me, Allen.”

Realizing his student was ghosting him and resolving to hit him with a hammer next time he saw him, he sighed and dropped down on the ground, resigning to smoking until Allen deigned to answer him.

The Bookman brat – Rabi or something – watched him wearily, and his voice had changed slightly when he spoke again. “Since the beansprout is AWOL, how about you tell us how we are all still alive, General?”

The two redheads stared at each other, and after a few moments and another drag from his cigarette, Cross finally answered. “Allen undid the Arc’s download.”

“You said that before, but _how_?”

The General growled, not for the first time wishing he was far away from the Bookman-in-training. “What would you say if I said that I don’t know?”

“That you’re lying.”

The answer was flippant, but there was steel in the single green eye.

Cross Marian shrugged, once again dragging from his cigarette. “Well, it’s the only answer you will get from me for now.”

When Allen awoke in the piano room for the second time, he was acutely aware of dried blood on his face and his stiff back from lying propped up against the piano seat for… for how long, anyways? Groaning from the pain throbbing through his entire body, he stood up slowly, his gaze flickering over to the mirror wall almost on instinct.

His heart skipped a beat.

Golden eyes stared back at him, his skin gray as ash, and the black, dried blood on his face calling the stigmata into more focus than they would have called on their own.

_An Exorcist cannot control the Arc, Allen._

Taking a shaky breath, Allen lifted his right arm and roughly rubbed the thick fabric against his face, wincing slightly at the pain shooting through his skull from the still tender stigmata. Looking into the mirror again, he was at least glad to see his face mostly free of the dried blood, though that was only a small relief to him.

_Your friends or your humanity, you cannot have both._

Swallowing dryly he touched the raw skin on his forehead gingerly, wondering just what he was supposed to do now. He couldn’t just abandon his friends, the only home he had ever known, but the way he was now he surely couldn’t go back either.

_“The others will know about you the moment you press the first key.”_

_“Will I still be me?”_

_Nea smiled cryptically as he replied. “More or less.”_

If he was completely honest, he didn’t really feel different. Glancing at his left hand, he flexed the fingers tentatively before he touched them with his right, surprised when there was no pain. Vaguely, he knew he should feel pain at the contact, should even feel the desire to destroy the glowing crystal in the back of his left hand, but found that it felt the same as it had before he played the piano.

Looking back up at his reflection, he supposed that if it weren’t for his appearance, he would be none the wiser of the change. As if reacting to his musings, did the gray in his skin recede, the stigmata closing painfully as his eyes turned from gold to silver.

Idly, he thought that was a bit too easy, the thought immediately met with a dry chuckle in his ears.

_Not everything in life is hard, nephew._

Allen groaned. “Don’t tell me I’ve got you stuck in my head forever now.”

_I don’t know, to be quite honest. This is my first reincarnation, after all._

That gave him pause, but before he could really order his thoughts the communicator on his ear crackled with static, the annoyed voice of his master reaching his ears. “Are you done pouting in a corner? Your friends are getting on my nerves, you stupid apprentice.”

Allen was about to reach for his communicator to reply, but paused, looking back at his reflection. Was he really going to be able to stay looking this way?

_I’ll try to help._

Startled by the soft manner his uncle said it, Allen hesitated again, before smiling softly.

“Thank you.”

Beginning to resign to his fate, Cross Marian was about to light another cigarette, when the voice of his apprentice responded from his communicator, sounding slightly worse for wear. “Sorry it took so long, Master.”

Deciding he could still yell at him once outside the confines of the Arc, the redhead decided to stay calm as he responded, the idiot’s friends looking up at him when he spoke. “Whatever, now that you’re finally talking to us, mind letting us all out of here, dumbass?”

**Author's Note:**

> No idea if this will continue, for now it's just a short drabble :)


End file.
